God's Chosen People

A Lebanese American friend sent me this today:

Jostein Gaarder is a leading Norwegian writer. He is author of the
>best-seller "Sophie's World" which has been translated into 53
languages and sold 25 million copies .
>
God's Chosen People>
>By Jostein Gaarder,
>
>Aftenposten
>
>
>August 5, 2006
>
>
>Israel is now history. We no longer recognize the State of Israel.
There is no way back. The State of Israel has raped the world's recognition and
will not achieve peace until it lays down its arms. The State of Israel, in
its present form is history, writes Jostein Gaarder.

There's no turning back. It's time to learn a new lesson: We no longer
recognize the State of Israel. We could not recognize the apartheid
regime of South Africa, nor did we recognize the Afghani Taliban regime. Then
there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the Serbs'
ethnic cleansing. We need to get used to the idea: The State of Israel, in
its current form, is history.

We don't believe in the notion of God's Chosen People. We laugh at
this people's capriciousness and weep at its misdeeds. To act as God's
Chosen >People is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity.
We call it racism.

Limits to tolerance

There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our
tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as a justification for occupation
and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at
those >who still believe that the god of flora, fauna and the galaxies has
selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it silly, stone
tablets, burning bushes and a license to kill.

We call baby killers "baby killers" and will never accept that people
such as these have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We
just say: Shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing and shame on
every >terrorist strike against civilians whether carried out by Hamas, the
Hezbollah or the State of Israel!

Unscrupulous art of war

We acknowledge, and pay heed to, Europe's deep responsibility for the
plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms and the
Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for the Jews to get their
own home. However, the State of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war
and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has
systematically flaunted International Law, international conventions, and countless
UN resolutions and can no longer expect protection from the same. It has
carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The Tribulation
will soon be over. The State of Israel has seen its Soweto.

We are now at the watershed. There's no turning back. The State of
Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until
it lays down its arms.

Without defense, without skin>
May the spirit and the word blow the apartheid walls of Israel down.
The State of Israel does not exist. It is now without defense, without
skin. May the world therefore have mercy upon the civilian population;
for our prophecies of doom are not aimed at the civilian individuals.

We wish the people of Israel well, nothing but wellness, but we
reserve the right to not eat Jaffa oranges as long as they are foul tasting and
poisonous. It was endurable for some years to live without eating the
blue grapes of apartheid.

They celebrate their triumphs>
We don't believe that Israel grieves any more for the forty killed
Lebanese children than it has wailed over the forty years spent in the desert
three >thousand years ago. We note that many Israelis celebrate such triumphs
in the same manner they once cheered the plagues of the Lord as "fitting
punishment" for the people of Egypt. (In that tale, the Lord God of
Israel appears as an insatiable sadist.) We ask ourselves if most Israelis
think >that one Israeli life is worth more than the forty Palestinian or
Lebanese lives.

For we've seen pictures of little Israeli girls writing hateful
greetings on the bombs about to be dropped on the civilian populations of Lebanon
and Palestine. The little Israeli girls are not cute when they strut with
glee at the death and torment on the other side of the fronts.

The retribution of blood vengeance

We do not recognize the rhetoric of the State of Israel. We do not
recognize the spiral of retribution and blood vengeance that comes with "an eye
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." We do not recognize the principle of ten
or a thousand Arab eyes for one Israeli eye. We do not recognize collective
>punishment or population thinning out as a political weapon. Two
thousand years have passed since a Jewish rabbi criticized the ancient doctrine
of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

He said: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." We do
not >recognize a state founded on anti-humanistic principles and on the
ruins of an archaic national and warlike religion. Or, as Albert Schweitzer
expressed it: "Humanitarianism consists of never sacrificing a human being for a
cause."

Compassion and forgiveness

We do not recognize the old Kingdom of David as a model for the 21st
>century map of the Middle East. The Jewish rabbi claimed two thousand years
ago that the Kingdom of God is not a martial restoration of the Kingdom of
David; the Kingdom of God is within us and amongst us. The Kingdom of God is
compassion and forgiveness.

Two thousand years have passed since the Jewish rabbi disarmed and
thoroughly humanized the old rhetoric of war. Even in his time, the
first Zionist terrorists were operating.

Israel doesn't listen

For two thousand years, we have rehearsed the syllabus of humanism,
but Israel doesn't listen. It wasn't the Pharisee who helped the man who
lay by the wayside, having fallen prey to robbers. It was a Samaritan; today
we would say, a Palestinian. We are humans firstly - then Christian,
Muslim, or Jew. Or as the Jewish rabbi said: "And if you greet your brethren
only, what more do you do than others?" We do not accept the kidnapping of
soldiers. But neither do we accept the deportation of whole populations or the
abduction of legally elected parliamentarians and government
ministers.

We recognize the State of Israel of 1948, but not the one of 1967. It
is the State of Israel that fails to recognize, respect or defer to the
Israeli state of 1948. Israel wants more - more water and more villages.
To obtain this there are those who want, with God's assistance, a
final solution to the Palestinian problem. 'The Palestinians have so many
other countries', certain Israeli politicians have argued; we have only one.

The U.S. or the world?

Or as the foremost protector of the State of Israel puts it: "May God
continue to bless America." A little child took note of that. She
turned to her mother, saying: "Why does the President always end his speeches
with 'God bless America'? Why not, 'God bless the world'?"

Then there was a Norwegian poet who let out this childlike sigh of the
heart: "Why doth Humanity so slowly progress?" It was he who wrote so
beautifully of the Jew and the Jewess. But he rejected the notion of
God's Chosen People. He personally liked to call himself a Muslim.

Calmness and mercy

We do not recognize the State of Israel. Not today, not as of this
writing,not in the hour of grief and wrath. If the entire Israeli nation
should fall to its own devices and parts of the population has to flee their
occupied areas into another Diaspora, then we say: May their surroundings stay
calm and show them mercy. It is an eternal crime, without mitigating
circumstances, to lay hand on refugees and a stateless people.
Peace and free passage for the evacuating, civilian population no
longer protected by a State. Shoot not at the fugitives! Take not aim at
them! They are vulnerable now -- like snails without shells, as vulnerable as slow
caravans of the Palestinian and Lebanese refugees, defenseless as the
women, children and elderly of Qana, Gaza, Sabra and Shatilla. Give the
Israeli refugees shelter; give them milk and honey!

Let not one Israeli child pay with his life. Far too many children and
civilians have already been murdered.